Terry RichardAlice Elshoff of Frenchglen leads a hike in the Badlands.

The Badlands is an area of jumbled lava flows, out in the desert about 15 miles east of Bend on the south side of U.S. 20. The area is managed by the Bureau of Land Management as a wilderness, though Congress has not declared it so. The solitude it affords, especially fall through spring, makes it a regionally important area in fast growing central Oregon. Technically, the Badlands is not in eastern Oregon, but it provides an easy-to-reach example of a landscape common farther out in the desert in Harney and Malheur counties.

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Terry RichardA tent camp at the edge of the Badlands.

Terry RichardThe kitchen arrangement for the Badlands camp.

Terry RichardHikers cross the Badlands lava flow.

Terry RichardA sand lily blooms in the Badlands

Terry RichardMore desert flora in the Badlands during May

Terry RichardAlice Elshoff examines what she believes to be a huge pile of petrified pack rat poop.

With the embers from a campfire glowing red, trip leader Irene Vlach suggested to no one in particular how nice it would be to have some music to wind down to after a hard hike in the Bend Badlands.

Borden Beck rose from his chair in front of the fire, walked to his truck and returned with a hand-held marimba he was learning to play. As he strummed the keys, a lilting melody wafted on the cool evening air.

That's when the coyotes started to howl.

"Oooowwwooooo!" they sang from their hiding places in the sagebrush. Beck stopped playing so everyone could listen to the musical masters of the desert.

The coyotes howled for a while, then piped down as if to encourage him to start playing again. He deftly stroked more chords, then the coyotes chimed in. This continued for five minutes, as both seemed to enjoy each other's accompaniment.

Inhospitable environment

The Badlands just east of Bend are an increasingly rare ecosystem, where wildlife is shielded from the explosive growth that has changed the face of Central Oregon.

Lava flows fill much of the landscape, but the Badlands are even less hospitable than the surrounding countryside. Small pressure ridges in the Badlands' lava rise above the moonscape, trapping sand carried by the wind over the eons and depositing it into numerous mini-basins. The sand makes the area less suitable for grazing, driving and other signs of human settlement.

Managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management as a wilderness study area, the 32,221-acre Badlands are a buffer zone, where wheels are not allowed, between sprawling Bend to the west and a 200,000-acre off-highway vehicle zone to the east.

Conservationists are pushing for formal declaration as wilderness, which requires an act of Congress, but have not won support of the three-person Deschutes County Commission despite polls that show community backing. Commission approval is something Rep Greg Walden, R-Ore., in whose district the Badlands lie, wants before he backs wilderness protection for the Badlands in the U.S. House of Representatives.

A new BLM management plan, expected to be issued this month, will close the Badlands to motorized vehicles and allow conservation groups to purchase and retire cattle grazing permits.

While the political winds blow, so do the desert winds that bring the sweet smell of juniper after a spring rain. Conservationists know that formal wilderness designation could protect the Badlands forever, but even without such status the Badlands are an interesting place to explore.

With eight newcomers to the Badlands from the Willamette Valley, Vlach, of the Sierra Club, enlisted Alice Elshoff to lead the way. A 70-year-old from Frenchglen, Elshoff had visited the Badlands scores of times with while teaching grade school in Bend.

Wiry as a juniper branch, Elshoff set a pace that forced the eight westsiders to work hard to maintain. She led the group three miles, to a formation called the Castle, then made a beeline back to the cars without the aid of a trail, map, compass or global-positioning device.

The BLM has created three formal entry points into the Badlands, but Elshoff prefers parking at milepost 15 on U.S. 20 east of Bend. The highway crests a little ridge here, so she finds her way out by walking to the high point.

She began the hike by heading north from the highway into the heart of the Badlands. The sound of vehicles speeding past disappeared a quarter-mile from the road; silence is one of the Badlands' biggest appeals.

Great mountain view

Oregon's Badlands should not conjure images of the colorful formations in South Dakota's Badlands National Park, or the reddish mesas of the North Dakota Badlands. Mainly black lava rock and sand, nevertheless the Deschutes County Badlands have something the Dakotas can't match.

On a clear day, the view of the snow-covered peaks of the Three Sisters dominates the western horizon. When the cluster of volcanoes is buried in snow, the Badlands are an ideal alternative for a wilderness experience. But when summer's warmth melts the Sisters' snow, Badlands explorers should limit their visit to mornings or evenings because of the heat.

Other landmarks help Badlands explorers keep their bearings -- Powell Buttes to the north, West Butte to the east and Horse Ridge to the south.

Illegal encroachments

A short way into the hike, Elshoff paused to share more knowledge:

"Those are sand lilies," she said, pointing toward numerous hardy white blooms poking through the gray sand. "When the lilies are at their peak, it looks like someone scattered stars all over the desert."

She noticed clumps of blue-bunch wheatgrass and Idaho fescue, two native grasses of Oregon's high desert. At the mouth of a cave, which would have been habitated by members of the Native American Paiute tribe, she found a green clump of Great Basin ryegrass.

"That's not native," she said. "It's possible that the people who lived here cultivated it, or simply carried seeds here on their sandals."

The cave also offered an example of why the Badlands could benefit from formal protection.

"I came here once and saw four-wheel tracks leading to a screen set up over the cave," Elshoff said. "It was obvious that someone had been sifting for artifacts."Only the coyotes know for sure what has been lost.